


Waiting

by brocanteur



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 11:04:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5705257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brocanteur/pseuds/brocanteur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>from a fic prompt: “things you said with no space between us”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting

“Oh,” she said, and the smile she smiled was as unreal and as pretty as any she had ever managed. “But then you wouldn’t love me, would you? You wouldn’t be here with me, and what would be the point?”

Joan looked at Jamie from across the bed—it was a big bed, and somehow, in the minutes after sex they had managed to slip farther and farther away from one another—thinking that in the pale, early morning light, Moriarty looked nearly human; naked and vulnerable, and not the dangerous animal Joan knew her to be.

“You think that I love you?”

Jamie’s smile faltered. She recovered quickly, instantly, but Joan saw it. She saw it and felt triumphant.

“If I were someone else—”

“Not someone else. Someone who _does_ something else. Someone—”

“Like you? Like Sherlock? Don’t be a fool, Joan, it doesn’t fit you. This isn’t about my _profession_. This is about who I am. And, loath as you are to admit it, you love who I am. Who I am makes you tremble.”

Joan tried to laugh as she turned away to lie on her back. There was a pillow and a rumpled sheet between them. There was distance; there were recriminations. And, there, as she stared up at the ceiling, Joan tried to laugh.

But Moriarty pressed on: “I’m right.”

It was early enough. Joan could slip out of bed and get dressed, be out of the hotel and back under her own sheets before Sherlock could notice she had been out all night. Unless _he_ had been up all night, but then she could claim that it wasn’t any of his business. He would raise an eyebrow, maybe snoop, a little, but how could he ever guess?

(Could he ever? The thought chilled Joan to her marrow. She should leave now. She really needed to go—)

What’s a pillow? What’s a rumpled blanket? What’s the length of a king-sized bed but a brief impediment? Moriarty had her by the arm before Joan finished sitting up.

“Don’t leave. Don’t be cross, darling. Let’s not talk. It always goes wrong when we talk.”

They were front to back. Jamie’s arms went around Joan; her cheek was to Joan’s shoulder. Clinging. She was clinging. Not begging, not quite there, but there was a certain desperation Joan had never heard in her voice before. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Maybe it was Joan’s own, sad craving willing it into existence.

Regardless:

“What’s the point?” she sighed at the gloom, at Jamie’s grip.

“Point?”

Jamie kissed Joan’s shoulder. The side of her throat. Behind her ear. Joan sighed again. Her hands unfurled and she slowly, slowly, brought them to rest on Jamie’s wrists.

“You think that I love you. What would be the point?”

There, at the base of her neck, the hint of Moriarty’s teeth. Jamie’s grip went slack, but it was only so that she could touch. Her hands roamed and Joan sighed again. She dropped her head back to Jamie’s shoulders and closed her eyes.

“Love doesn’t need a point. It appears without warning. Stays even when you only want to do away with it. It enters like a virus and there’s little to do but wait it out. You’ll wait it out with me, won’t you, darling?”

The last sentence was barely a murmur, and Joan nearly missed it. It did not matter. Jamie was inside of her and she could only forget herself. Home would wait. Sherlock would wait.

Someday soon, it would be over. (Wouldn’t it?) Desperate to find Jamie’s mouth, desperate for release, Joan twisted around. They kissed. That it seemed significant had to be an accident of the moment. There was nothing between them; nothing and everything.

Joan remembered to answer: “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

She waited.


End file.
